Vice President's Remarks to the Travel Pool
On Board Air Force Two
En Route Washington, D.C.

Q Well, listen, we appreciate you taking a couple of minutes. I
guess, just as an initial matter we'd like to ask you to clarify those
comments that have now been in the news today concerning --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I was being interviewed by a talk show host.
I don't talk about techniques and I wouldn't. I have said that the
interrogation program for a select number of detainees is very
important. It has been I think one of the most valuable intelligence
programs we have. And I believe it has allowed us to prevent terrorist
attacks against the United States. I did not talk about specific
techniques involved --

Q So it was not about water boarding, even though he asked you
about dunking in the water?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't say anything about water boarding.
Those were all his comments. He didn't even use that phrase.

Q He said dunking in the water.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't say anything, he did.

Q How are things going with regard to the election? How do you
feel -- you've got --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think they're going pretty well. I did the
116th event tonight, campaign event. I've got some more events
scheduled next week obviously, in the run-up to the election. I feel
pretty good about things. I think of the summer we were down, I would
describe. I think that it picked up in September, started -- momentum
came our way. The President gave some great speeches in the global war
on terror. Gasoline prices came down. It was a reminder to people that
the economy was in pretty good shape, then we hit a rough patch in the
Foley matter. I think that's been behind us now in terms of the
election. Obviously, the House is going to do whatever the House is
going to do. But I say it's the last week or so that we have regained
momentum both in the House and the Senate.

Q How do you feel your and the President's pressing the
terrorist issue in your campaign speeches, how do you feel that's
resonating with the voters, because the polls aren't showing that issue
is doing that well?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You've got to be a little careful of the
polls. We always are. If I've learned anything in my time with the
President, and coming back in the 2000 election, 2004, the exit surveys,
so you become a bit of skeptic about the poll results, and we don't
operate and we don't govern on that basis.

I think while there are a lot of people who are concerned about
Iraq, for example, it's my own belief basically what they want is they
have the feeling that we can win, that we can succeed, that it's not a
situation in which an overwhelming majority wants us to leave without
finishing the mission. I think the reason we talk about it's a global
war on terror and Iraq is a part of that. The Democrats don't want to
admit that. No, no, no, it's a separate deal. It's not a separate
deal. It has a great bearing on the willingness of people in that part
of the world to sign on and support governments like Karzai in
Afghanistan or Maliki in Iraq or Musharraf in Pakistan. And the United
States' ability to stay the course and get the job done is a very, very
important piece of business, especially when you consider that our
adversaries are betting that they can break our will, that we won't
stay.

Q But do you believe that that is actually resonating with
voters because if you combine terrorism and the Iraq war, people are
having problems with that -- the public, as you and the President
acknowledge -- so by combining the terrorism, which actually had been
your strength in previous elections, with something that is growing
unpopular now, do you think that perhaps it's not resonating, as well as
it did in the past.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Whether it resonates or not, we've got an
obligation to provide leadership, to tell the American people what the
problem is, to identify the threat, and to lay out and execute a
strategy for dealing with it. The threat is there. It doesn't matter
what the polls say about the threat, the threat is real.

If you spend as much time as we do, beginning first thing every
morning six days a week with our intelligence brief, there's no doubt
about the threat. Just a couple months ago, we had two dozen wannabe
suicide bombers in England, the U.K. getting ready to get in airliners
headed for the United States and blow them out of the sky. They're
trying to acquire biological or chemical or nuclear weapons, if they can
get their hands on them.

Anybody who thinks that's not a serious threat, or who sort of
reverts back to the pre-9/11 mind set, thinks that we can withdraw
behind our oceans here and be safe and secure is an idiot, with all due
respect. 9/11 proved the vulnerability of the United States to the
actions of a handful of terrorists. It's our job to make sure the
American people are aware of the threat. We take an obligation when
we're sworn in to defend the constitution of the United States against
all enemies foreign and domestic. If we were to shape our message to
the voters -- excuse me, shape our message to the polls, and say to the
voters, because they don't like to hear it, or there may be resistance
there, I think there's a problem. That would be fundamentally
irresponsible on our part.

And we did it in 2000. We did it in 2004. We're doing it in 2006.
We're not pulling our punches. We're not trying to ignore what is, in
fact, an extremely important issue. We're telling it like we see it.
The President and I, neither one of us is ever going to run for office
again. Our job is to be the best we can at defending the country. And
I think we've done rather well since we've been able to defeat with
respect to attacks now for more than five years. We know they've been
trying to come at us, and they've failed. And they've failed because we
went on offense. We went after terrorists. We went after state
sponsors of terror. We put in place the Patriot Act, the terrorist
surveillance program, the interrogation program the CIA runs. And all
of those things have contributed directly to our ability to disrupt
attacks against the United States.

And there's a fundamental difference between the parties. Anybody
who wants can look at it. We had votes on the Patriot Act when it was
renewed last year. The Senate Democrats filibustered it, and Harry Reid
announced he'd killed it. He was wrong. We beat him. But they tried
to kill the Patriot Act, which has been vital for our success. And we
had the vote recently in the House on the Terror Surveillance Program.
It was passed the House. It was pending in the Senate, but in the
House, 177 Democrats voted against it. If the Democratic Party had its
way, there wouldn't be a Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The third item was the military commissions, the Detainee
Interrogation Program that's been up before the House and the Senate.
In the House when it came up, 162 Democrats voted no. The same measure
came before the Senate, 32 out of 44 Senate Democrats voted no. You may
not like it, but you need to know where those parties stand on those
issues. The United States is safer today. We have avoided and
prevented attacks against the United States for the last five years
because of those programs, and the Democrats voted overwhelmingly
against them, just in the last month. So is that an issue in this
campaign? Damn right. It ought to be.

The American people ought to look at that and decide whether or not
they want to support an aggressive strategy that's worked, or whether
they're going to opt for the Democratic view of the world, the sort of
John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha view that says we ought to get out
of Iraq. We should not be involved aggressively overseas. We ought to
shut down the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Detainee
Interrogation Program and close down the Patriot Act. Those are the
issues. Those are the votes. Look at the record. And I think that's
the basis on which we're perfectly prepared to fight on this campaign.

Q You talked before about the success of those programs,
obviously in preventing attacks on the U.S. But I might be hearing you
emphasize that a little bit more now. Is that something that you think
is going to be a theme for the next couple of weeks, or however long
you've got?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: If you look at my speeches throughout most of
the campaign, I've focused on two major issues. One is the economy --
tax policy -- and the other has been the global war on terror. And
since those votes, I've obviously talked a fair amount about those, as
well, too. I don't know -- if elections are about accountability, and
people are going to judge government officials based on what they do
while they're in office, it seems to me one of the key things you have
to evaluate if you're a voter is what are the views of the candidates,
the parties on how we manage the global war on terror, how we defend the
nation against further 9/11s.

The record is there for anybody who wants to look at them. Now,
I'm going to hang it up.

Q May I ask one more?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Last one.

Q Okay, thank you. To go to tax policy for a second, the
Democrats, especially in the House, lately have been saying, well, we
don't really have any intention of rolling back those tax cuts. Those
aren't going to expire until 2010, and we don't really have any
intention of going after them in the meantime in any significant way.
Can you respond to that idea?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure. The problem is that if the do nothing
those rates are going back up and those tax cuts expire, because when we
passed them. The first place, we did it through the reconciliation
process. And that means that those new rates were sunsetted. So if the
Democrats were to take control, they don't have to pass a piece of
legislation to increase taxes. All they have to do is not act, and then
as those tax cuts expire, terminate, those rates will go back up to what
they were before we passed our tax program in '01 and '03. So the
marriage penalty will be back. The child tax credit will go from $1,000
down to $500. The top rates will go back up. Rates on capital gains
and dividends will go back up. That's because of the way the Senate
rules work in reconciliation. So if you're Charlie Rangel and you're
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and you want to a big tax
increase, you just don't do anything, and that will produce the tax
increase. And Charlie has said he doesn't believe there's a single one
of those cuts that ought to be extended. His words. So do the
Democrats believe in a tax increase; I think so. I take him at his
word. He would be the individual who would be chairman of the Ways and
Means Committee, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think
we're going to prevail. And I obviously believe it's in the national
interest that we succeed.